Kurtenbach: For weeks, the 49ers have fended off the inevitable. It arrived in Houston

The ers have played certain good football this season The ers have played various bad football this season But Sunday was something else entirely The ers played so poorly against the Houston Texans that it makes you question if they can ever win again Their performance in a - loss was in a word awful Or if you need another word you can go with terrible Or dreadful Or abysmal And if you re someone who lives and dies with the Niners play it was likely depressing Toss whatever word you want on it but the Niners performance was so bad their coach had to use the nuclear option He had to tell the truth in his post-game press conference They kicked our ass Kyle Shanahan reported There s not much to sugarcoat The first half was unacceptable The Second half it didn t get much better Related Articles ers Studs and Duds Deommodore Lenoir s game-shifting blunder just one of a multitude of in Niners loss to Titans Kurtenbach To fix their run battle the ers had to un-Shanahan their offense ers Studs and Duds Christian McCaffrey is still the NFL s top running back Kurtenbach My predictions for ers-Falcons Can Mac Jones survive the Falcons onslaught Kurtenbach Kyle Shanahan once compared him to a -year-old Now Kendrick Bourne is carrying the Niners What s the lesson here for the Niners who I m pretty sure will win another meeting this season It s so simplistic it will come across as trite you need good players to win in the NFL There was a point where the Niners had those good players The bulk of them are now injured A new batch Dee Winters Sam Okuayinonu joined the list of the infirm on Sunday The Niners entered the season with little idea of their roster They have far less of an idea nowadays What is this unit now Overmatched Call them the ers they re at least players short of a championship roster And on Sunday they provided minimal interference to the Texans best-case scenario For weeks Shanahan and his staff have been pulling off a high-wire act using elite schemes and clever coaching to mask the deficiencies of third-stringers and street free agents They ve been putting on a master class in coaching up a roster that should be at best But Sunday The whole operation swerved off the road and straight into a ditch Shanahan and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh couldn t trick the Texans They couldn t bludgeon them either They had to go toe-to-toe and the Texans even at two wins in seven games were multiple weight classes above them A minimal central things to note The Texans didn t punt until there was remaining in the fourth quarter The Texans took a - lead in the first quarter That was points to the ers offensive plays no points The Texans doubled the Niners offensive output yards of total offense to The Texans didn t even play that well What went wrong for the Niners A little bit of everything Shanahan noted But other than that Kyle how was the challenge Related Articles ers Studs and Duds Deommodore Lenoir s game-shifting blunder just one of a great number of in Niners loss to Titans Instant analysis of ers - loss to Texans ers pregame WR Watkins debuting all cornerbacks suiting up vs Texans ers rally comes up short in - loss Charles Woodson knows what ers Brock Purdy is going though with turf toe ers keys to winning in Houston Keep up McCaffrey s Texas-sized workload The good news here is that there s no mutiny on deck in Santa Clara The Niners were playing with something resembling house money after a - start to the season They can afford a dud or two Beyond that real professionals don t point fingers at others they take the blame themselves And in a challenge like Sunday s where there s nothing but blame to go around that s exactly what will happen The offense will blame itself The defense will blame itself Special teams will try to get in on the act even though it was pretty good in Houston But the Niners should be careful with the self-flagellation they don t need anyone else injured Several players will return in the days and weeks to come Brock Purdy s return seems close and after Mac Jones woeful performance Sunday is legitimately anticipated Ricky Pearsall and Brandon Aiyuk might return to the receiving corps as well Though I m not holding my breath on either Perhaps the oft-injured but legitimately impactful Yetur Gross-Matos can invigorate the Niners stagnant and third-rate defensive line which did nothing to make Texans quarterback CJ Stroud s life hard Sunday He was doing yoga the relaxing type on the sideline in the fourth quarter Or maybe whatever curse has been placed on this company continues to bring season-changing injuries Around the ers locker room players had been calling the season a bizarro The constant nearly vindictive string of injuries was the same as last year s six-win fiasco but the results were the exact opposite What no one needed to publicly process was the possibility that San Francisco with great coaching and opportunistic play was just fending off the inevitable that the bill would come due The Niners still control their own destiny They earned that right with their improbable but irrevocable start to the season But that bill Perhaps it s definitively here And how the Niners respond to this whooping will tell us if this season is in fact any different